Customer Reviews

Gustave Dore

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This book will bring great joy to anyone who loves Gustave Dore's drawings. They are reproduced here with amazing clarity and in eye-pleasing large size. The book's drawbacks are twofold: 1) not enough care was taken to avoid errors in the text that accompanies each drawing and 2) the introduction is puerile. Regarding the first problem, to take one example, one of Dore's illustrations for Charles Perrault's Complete French Fairy Tales, Hop O' My Thumb, is given the following description in the superlative translation of these tales into English by Christopher Betts: "The Ogre pulls the boys out from under the bed." In the book I'm reviewing here the same illustration is accompanied by the following text: "He dragged them one after another from under the bad." That's right, it says "bad," not "bed." As for the second problem, the introduction is so badly written - perhaps I should say it was bedly written, on the assumption that the author was ill and bedridden - that the author has wisely chosen anonymity over fame or, more precisely, over shame. Its deficiencies are obvious, but become especially glaring when compared to the elegant introduction Betts wrote to his outstanding translation. On balance, however, this is a thrilling book that is worth much more than its modest price would suggest. I would also highly recommend the book translated by Betts, The Complete Fairy Tales by Charles Perrault, an Oxford University Press World's Classics publication. This Oxford University Press publication, which is also beautifully illustrated, is a complete, unalloyed joy to read and behold.